Liz Cheney ousted

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Cheney described her loss as the beginning of a new chapter in her political career as she addressed a small collection of supporters, including her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, on the edge of a vast field flanked by mountains and bales of hay.

“Our work is far from over,” she said Tuesday evening, evoking Abraham Lincoln, who also lost congressional elections before ascending to the presidency and preserving the union.

The results — and the roughly 30-point margin — were a powerful reminder of the GOP’s rapid shift to the right. A party once dominated by national security-oriented, business-friendly conservatives like her father now belongs to Trump, animated by his populist appeal and, above all, his denial of defeat in the 2020 election.

I have said since Jan. 6 that I will do whatever it takes to ensure Donald Trump is never again anywhere near the Oval Office — and I mean it,” she said.

Four hundred miles to the east of Cheney’s concession speech, festive Hageman supporters gathered at a sprawling outdoor rodeo and Western culture festival in Cheyenne, many wearing cowboy boots, hats and blue jeans.

“Obviously we’re all very grateful to President Trump, who recognizes that Wyoming has only one congressional representative and we have to make it count,” said Hageman, a ranching industry attorney who had finished third in a previous bid for governor.

Echoing Trump’s conspiracy theories, she falsely claimed the 2020 election was “rigged” as she courted his loyalists in the runup to the election.

Trump and his team celebrated Cheney’s loss, which may represent his biggest political victory in a primary season full of them. The former president called the results “a complete rebuke” of the Jan. 6 committee.

“Liz Cheney should be ashamed of herself, the way she acted, and her spiteful, sanctimonious words and actions towards others,” he wrote on his social media platform. “Now she can finally disappear into the depths of political oblivion where, I am sure, she will be much happier than she is right now. Thank you WYOMING!”

Cheney will now be forced from Congress at the end of her third and final term in January. She is not expected to leave Capitol Hill quietly.

She will continue in her leadership role on the congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack until it dissolves at the end of the year. And she is actively considering a 2024 White House bid -- as a Republican or independent -- having vowed to do everything in her power to fight Trump’s influence in her party.

With Cheney’s loss, Republicans who voted to impeach Trump are going extinct.

In all, seven Republican senators and 10 Republican House members backed Trump’s impeachment in the days after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol as Congress tried to certify President Joe Biden’s victory. Just two of those 10 House members have won their primaries this year. After two Senate retirements, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is the only such Senate Republican on this year’s ballot.

Cheney was forced to seek assistance from the state’s tiny Democratic minority in her bid to pull off a victory. But Democrats across America, major donors among them, took notice. She raised at least $15 million for her election, a stunning figure for a Wyoming political contest.

Voters responded to the interest in the race. With a little more than half of the vote counted, turnout ran about 50% higher than in the 2018 Republican primary for governor.

Congressional candidate Harriet Hageman was fooled into opposing the presidential bid of former President Donald Trump in 2016 by “Democrats and Liz Cheney’s friends in the media,” she said Monday.

Hageman, responding to a New York Times article about her current support for Trump compared to her opposition to his campaign in 2016, said she learned that what was being said about Trump then was untrue.

“The fact is, I heard and believed the lies the Democrats and Liz Cheney’s friends in the media were telling at the time, but that is ancient history as I quickly realized their allegations against President Trump were untrue. They lied about him before he was elected and continue to lie about him to this day.”

The New York Times article, written by Reid J. Epstein, described Hageman’s condemnation of Trump as “somebody who is racist and xenophobic.”

The article called Hageman’s current support for Trump “one of the most striking illustrations yet of the political elasticity demonstrated both by ambitious Republicans in the Trump era and by the former president himself…”

But Hageman said support for Trump was common among Republicans who took a closer look at him during the 2016 GOP Convention.

“It’s true I was a (U.S. Sen. Ted) Cruz delegate at the convention in 2016, as were most of the Wyoming delegates,” she said. “Like me, there were a lot of people who initially supported other candidates and then came to rally behind President Trump when he won the nomination.”

Wyoming’s Republican Party in 2016 backed Cruz’s presidential campaign.

Hageman added she is proud to support Trump now.

“He was the greatest president of my lifetime and I am proud to have been able to re-nominate him in 2020,” she said. “And I’m proud to strongly support him today. Our country would be in a better place with him still in office.”

The New York Times article also discussed what it called Hageman’s involvement during the 2016 convention in an effort to “unbind” delegates who had pledged support to one candidate so they could vote for any candidate to be the GOP’s presidential candidate.

Hageman said as a member of the convention’s Rules Committee, she focused on two issues. One was to close primaries so that only registered Republicans could vote in GOP primary elections.

The other was a proposal to give states with a high proportion of Republican officials, such as Wyoming, more delegates at the convention.

Hageman dismissed the New York Times story as “the national news media trying to ride to Liz Cheney’s defense by attacking me.”

I imagine Kinzinger is going to be looking over his shoulder now. Last man in the republican party with principles.

What will the unraveling of American democracy look like? What will change?

What will the unraveling of American democracy look like? What will change?

I can respect Liz Cheney for sticking to her guns while also pointing out that she set out to be martyred, and succeeded. An individual politician might cross the party from time to time, but to actively set oneself up as a high profile antagonist of your own party while essentially serving as a mascot for the rival party? Yeah, that's going to get you thrown out of office regardless of the underlying cause.

Well, if Trump runs in 2024, she can run against him just to gum up the cogs of his political machine.

What will the unraveling of American democracy look like? What will change?